Cohen Lab Says Goodbye to Melissa Althouse

Dr. Cohen and Melissa celebrate the completion of her Master's degree in December.

After a busy 2016 and an impressive three years, we are getting ready to bid a fond farewell to recent M.S. Melissa Althouse.   Melissa went into the summer with her first peer-reviewed paper accepted into the journal Waterbirds.   She then spent 12 weeks in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Directorate Resource Assistant Fellows Program, where she analyzed and summarized opportunities for conservation and migration of saltmarsh throughout Southern New England.    On November 28, Melissa did a fantastic job defending her M.S. thesis, "Behavioral and Demographic Effects of Human Disturbance to Staging Roseate Terns (Sterna dougallii) in the Cape Cod National Seashore".    The majority of the northwest Atlantic population of federally-endangered roseate terns gathers for several weeks at Cape Cod, Massachusetts prior to their long fall migration to South America.  Melissa found that mixed-species tern flocks that included roseates were much more likely to flush in response to human pedestrians than to potential competitor species, even gulls which steal fish from terns that are attempting to feed their young.   She also found that terns at less-disturbed sites tended to spend more time in flight and less in resting and related behaviors than terns at more-disturbed sites.    She provided the seashore with much-needed guidelines for setback distances for human activity around tern flocks.

Melissa's summer fellowship paid off, as she was offered a permanent position with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service after graduation.  Melissa will be a Wildlife Biologist at Erie Natonal Wildlife Refuge in Pennsylvania.   It has been fun having Melissa in our lab, and wish her the best for the next phase of her career!

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